


sunburn in the making

by toskliviydays



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Lithro Disaster™ Lavi, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 02:28:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5810065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toskliviydays/pseuds/toskliviydays
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And it may be stupid, and useless, and just the slightest bit masochistic-– he’s not going to deny himself the knowledge of just why Lavi feels so familiar sometimes-– but he’s always liked the idea of pulling ahead, however briefly, in a game he is destined to lose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sunburn in the making

**Author's Note:**

> Someone please pay attention to the crucial role Doug plays in Lavi's development of interpersonal relationships.
> 
> anyways lol

Exhaustion is dripping from him like mud, heavy and clinging and miserable, and as much as he tries to look nonchalant by leaning on the door frame (arms crossed, ankles crossed, knuckles red and a bruise blooming heavily across his cheekbone), it is frighteningly clear that Lavi is flagging beneath the weight of the mission he’s just returned from.

“Hey, Yuu. Miss me?”

(Lavi does this, now, this thing where he drifts immediately to the rooms of his teammates after he has reported in, after he has recorded his truths, like there is something in him that needs to be replenished by their presence, the knowledge they are still there. Kanda has always seen the distance of a Bookman on him, but there are these little things that have increased over the years that smudge humanity onto that blank slate. He knows as well as anyone that this spells disaster for Lavi, for _Bookman_ , but he can’t help the smug pleasure of seeing it.)

Kanda wrinkles his nose, glaring at the filth encrusted in the wounds he can see (haphazardly cleaned, surely, on the way back). “You look like shit. Go see a nurse.”

And at that Lavi grins, a bit of light returning to his face. There is still that emptiness in his eyes, but Kanda refrains from letting himself notice it more that he already does. He doesn’t care. Really.

“Aww, what, you care about my well being? I knew it.” The teasing is decidedly lackluster.

“If you get infected and die it’ll be more work for me. You’re dirtying my doorway.” He closes his eyes, forcing himself to refocus on his breath, on the air around him, and he barely hears the snort but he doesn’t have to look to see Lavi’s gone.

It’s quiet for a while after that.

When Lavi returns, Kanda can feel the ghost of preemptive irritation flickering in him– he’s catching up on mediation, he needs _quiet_ – but all Lavi seems to do is pass him, sit on the bed, and Kanda can’t be bothered to interrupt his own mediation if Lavi isn’t going to either. He knows better than to not take advantage of these things.

He can feel Lavi’s gaze on him, resting heavily upon his skin, but it isn’t searing, doesn’t prickle ice-cold and piercing like it does when Lavi is trying to _see_  him. He’s just looking, now, and it’s like sunbeams through a thick canopy pressing against him, air stilling with the onset of the evening. It’s almost calming, he thinks.

When he opens his eyes it’s to the sight of Lavi curled up loosely on his bed, looking for all the world the exhausted teenager he is. His visible eye is drooping with sleep but there’s a lazy smile curving softly in his lips, his eyelids, and the sincerity of it makes something inside Kanda warm, just the slightest bit. He sighs.

“Hey, dumbass, shouldn’t you get to bed?”

Lavi lets out the smallest huff of a laugh, out through his nose, and there are a thousand obnoxious things he could say, but instead he settles on: “I’m already in one.” And he wiggles a little more into the mattress as if to make a point. Kanda has half the mind to hit him, but he has rarely felt so calm with the idiot there. He doesn’t feel like he needs to be the one to ruin it.

Kanda stares for a long, long moment, holding Lavi’s gaze, and he can feel the moment Lavi becomes self-conscious, perhaps the slightest bit nervous, ready to make his annoying escape by saying something terrible. It’s old hat by now. But Kanda simply stands, re-ties his hair with careful fingers, and moves over to the bed.

(The phantom feeling of sun on his skin is starting to burn.)

He crouches down, nose inches from Lavi’s, and mutters a low: “Move over, or get out.” And he knows the only reason he gets his request without comment (but with plenty of silent blinking, as if he will disappear in a cloud of smoke should Lavi wait just a moment longer) is because the idiot is too baffled to say anything useful at all. Lavi could run, and he could lash out as if to negate this strange sincerity he has been allowing himself, but he’s exhausted and Kanda tries not to feel like he’s getting his way.

(He doesn’t _want_  to share his bed with Lavi– hates to share a bed with anyone, really– but if there was a scoreboard for this strange antagonistic game they’ve been playing, Kanda has just tipped the points in his favor. And it may be stupid, and useless, and just the slightest bit masochistic– he’s not going to deny himself the knowledge of just _why_  Lavi feels so familiar sometimes– but he’s always liked the idea of pulling ahead, however briefly, in a game he is destined to lose.)

Lavi narrows his eyes, tensing, and Kanda figures that he’s probably taken a step too far simply by virtue of going off script. Which is fucking _predictable_ , really, because it’s one of the few times he’s done _anything_. But he remembers the debacle that was the single akuma infiltration shortly before Lavi and Bookman went to go help with Miranda, remembers how shaken Lavi had been. (He knows, mostly, because Lavi refused to say anything that wasn’t flippant about it. Not that Kanda pressed. It didn’t matter.)

Kanda sighs, stepping away, and gives Lavi a contemplative look. “Do you need to check if I’m human?” And he doesn’t _mean_  for it to sound so taunting but it _does_ , and, well.

He had thought it all very stupid, to be honest, that Lavi felt anything for a Finder dumb enough to go and get himself turned into an akuma. He had worked for the Black Order; he should have _known_. And Kanda doesn’t feel bad for bringing it up, or for making it known that he thinks Lavi’s an idiot for being so haunted by it, but he is a little disappointed that he went and ruined the peace anyway. He still won, though. For today. He did.

Lavi gives him the shiniest, fakest, could-almost-fool-him smile that he has to offer, and there’s a tension quivering in his arms and legs like he’s ready to bolt. “Always better safe than sorry, ne, Yuu?” But he doesn’t move, just frowns and stares, and Kanda can’t help but frown and stare back.

After a moment Lavi huffs, rolling over onto his back and scrubbing his hands over his face. He makes a self-pitying sound, peers through his fingers up at the ceiling. “I’m kidding. I’ll leave.” And he does.

Kanda doesn’t stop him. There would have been no reason to. But all the same, he feels something like loss settling darkly in his stomach, and he tries his best to ignore it by going straight to sleep.

(He should have known that a victory taken over Lavi by stooping to his level (as opposed to just _forcing_  him to fuck off, however infrequently it worked) was a victory just waiting to be turned on its head.)

They aren’t scheduled for any missions for the next few days, are just waiting on standby for something to be handed to them, and it would be to no one’s surprise that when Kanda walks into his room the next evening, he stops dead at the sight of that _rabbit_  sprawled out like he owns the place. Kanda doesn’t miss the self-indulgent look Lavi sends to him when he stretches.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Taking you up on your offer.” Lavi grins, all teeth, head turned just enough to be able to see him.

And Kanda grits _his_  teeth, all bitter resignation buried under rage. “Fuck off, I didn’t offer you anything.”

(He did, though, and he hadn’t not meant it, necessarily.)

Lavi just keeps grinning, and if it weren’t for the glint in his eye someone might have mistaken it for adoring. He laughs. “You know, rabbits only flop down when they completely trust that they’re safe.”

(That feels like an apology for yesterday and an embarrassingly sincere implication at the same time. Kanda glowers.)

“Nobody asked you for your trust, dumbass.” But all the same Kanda crosses the threshold into his room, intent on pretending Lavi isn’t sullying his space. It’s a little hard, though, when he feels Lavi’s gaze like the sunbeams across his skin again, even harder as it turns scorching while he moves to change into his sleeping clothes. He feels like he’s going to glare holes into his wall with the effort of holding back the heat that prickles up the back of his neck, and he’s almost completely positive it isn’t working at all.

(He’s not embarrassed by people seeing him. It’s just _skin_ ; he didn’t even understand the point of clothes long after Edgar spent three days trying to impress the notion upon him as a child, let alone when Tiedoll waxed poetic about social constructs for an hour after Kanda brought it up in passing. It’s just… he’s embarrassed by the heat Lavi sends towards him, sometimes, and he’s not at all sure if he prefers it to the cold distance of his calculated Bookman gaze. He’s embarrassed it has any effect on him. He’s embarrassed that Lavi _knows_  this.)

Tugging his shirt roughly down his torso, he whips his head around to glare at Lavi again– as if repetition does anything to change the outcome– and he’s startled to realize that Lavi’s looking _away_  now, appearing twice as embarrassed and equally as if he is trying not to show it.

(Kanda’s still winning, then.)

(The corner of his mouth twitches up, caught somewhere between a sneer and sincerely amused delight.)

In the end, Kanda does share the bed with him, mostly because Lavi is red with embarrassment but he’s trying _so hard_. He’s trying so hard. He thinks he’s being cool, or whatever, doing that thing he does with Lenalee and Allen– but never with Kanda, before– and Kanda’s taking an almost perverse delight in watching it. He’s probably been spending too much time with Lavi if that’s the case, but what can he say? It isn’t his fault.

He wakes up halfway through the night with cold feet pressed up against his calves, even colder fingers curled in against his chest, and too-warm arms wrapped vice-like around his chest. He doesn’t understand how one person can be so contrary and obnoxious even in sleep but, then again, if anyone could do it it would be the man with him right now. He takes a second to be well and truly disgusted.

There are several long moments that he spends glaring into the darkness, trying to decide whether or not to just throw the idiot right out of his bed. Somehow he thinks it would be a defeat. But also, this is bullshit, so he twists around and shoves Lavi squarely onto the floor, Lavi shouting incoherently as he falls.

“Leech off someone else, you parasite!”

Kanda can hear more than see Lavi mournfully cataloging the damage (how dramatic), a whine in his voice even as he needles, “My, what big words from a mighty big brute!”

Kanda throws a pillow as hard as he possibly can, and Lavi laughs.

This is better, probably.


End file.
